began to concentrate ..... on the kind of music that excited him. Hap- pily for his career, it was around this time that his father gave him a financial interest in the store and turned over the manag-ement to ......., him. -.:.0.........::. ...:-:.: .:.:.....:. "::> ":::..:";:..::;..:::;.":> t::: r,K om:t e t: r ; : period, the Commodore :.'. .. . .' . .. had a loudspeaker above the door. Gabler played his favorite hot records J. over it so persistently that he attracted the nucleus of his present clientele rather quickly. He also attracted the police, who were in the midst of an anti-noise campaign. The loud- speaker was remo ve.d in the early thirties at their request, but by then the jazz set, instead of just listening on the sidewalk, had come in- side. This group included not only young gentlemen from Yale, Harvard, and Princeton but somewhat older jazz lovers, mostly in publishing and adver- tising, who worked in the neighborhood. Both varieties provided Gabler with spiritual direction. They began by being kindly disposed toward a man who would play music all day that most peo- ple could not endure for an hour. From this they passed to the matter of further improving his taste. Gabler took eager- ly to instruction and ended up by teach- ing his masters. The Ivy League boys dutifully came to class weekends and returned Sunday night to school to fill columns in their undergraduate publications with news about the Com- modore Music Shop. Some of them were even permitted to work there during vacations. The advertisIng and magazine men spent their lunch hours, evenings, and all day Saturday at the Commodore. Eventually the shop be- caIne so popular that Gabler opened a branch on V\T est Fifty-second Street, in the middle of the hot-music belt. The branch store did well, but after three gidd y years Gabler decided to close it down because of the wartime shortage of both manpower and records. Be- fore he did, however, Howard Bay, the theatrical designer, got so fond of the place that he worked up a window dis- -.. . . .. .- "':'., ';..,:. ......." . ," .:. : "." ..... ..- . ] :,.4 37 c=:-- I:: ' I ' I ' " ,', ,-- ,,'.. .... ',':. - -- . -- - - -- . '). ,,":0.-, ' , ..I,:" t' ,....... .,. ....,....', . ','C " () . . .............:. play that would have done for j Saks-Fifth A venue. "Just a little diorama gadget," Bay now says deprecatingly. eel ust a little New Orleans sort of gadget." The gadget, which was never installed, was to have had a street scene and an interior of Mahogany Hall, a famous, long since departed New Orleans bagnio. It was in Mahogany Hall and lesser bordellos, during the early nineteen-hundreds, that, ac- cording to one determined school of thought, jazz was born. Bay planned to set up figurines of a number of the old-time musicians and a couple of the wel1- known girls of the era. Gabler liked the idea, but the Fifty-second Street store closed before Bay got the diorama fin- ished. Gabler has lately thought that it would dress up the Forty-second Street store and he plans to call Bay in on the project soon. Almost anything would dress up the Forty-second Street store. It has an anonymous exterior which gives it, in a dingy block of saloons, fruit stores, and shoe-shine parlors, a sort of protective coloration. A red-and-w hite electric sign, bearing the name Commodore, hangs to the left of the entrance, looking .,..---.... v ;Ií r :pJ} i v- i . . as though it belonged to the shoe-shine parlor next door. There are records in the windows, and a number of the fancy alhums the big companies now put a lot of their products in, but even these con- trive to look tired and cheerless. Gabler trims the windows himself when he finds time, which he almost never does. One of his most recent innovations was strew- ing a few imitation flowers over the rec- ords. The neighboring shoe-shine parlor, with its gaudy neon tubing and its clock in the window, makes a much bigger splash. It is three times the size of the present Commodore and at least six times as big as the old place, which had a fr ntage of only nine feet. When the